Poster from TMDB
OverviewAI-generated
Freaks is a 1932 American black-and-white film directed by Tod Browning. The cast includes Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, and Roscoe Ates. Screenwriters for the project were Tod Robbins, Al Boasberg, Willis Goldbeck, and Edgar Allan Woolf, while production was handled by Tod Browning, Harry Rapf, Dwain Esper, and Irving Thalberg. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer served as the production company and distributor. The film is categorized as a horror, thriller, and drama, and it is associated with the Pre-Code Hollywood movement.
The movie has a runtime of 64 minutes and was originally released in English, French, and German. It carries the tagline "Can a full grown woman truly love a midget?" and features keywords such as infidelity, dwarf, attempted murder, clown, and beauty. The film has received various ratings, including a 7.8 score on IMDb and a 7.763 average on TMDb. It has also been distributed via video on demand platforms like Netflix.
Synthesized by Vinony from 50 facts across 6 sources: Wikidata, TMDb, Internet Archive, IMDb, OMDb, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Film · TMDB
7.8A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.
Cast
- Harry Earles as Hans
- Olga Baclanova as Cleopatra
- Daisy Earles as Frieda
- Henry Victor as Hercules
- Wallace Ford as Phroso
- Leila Hyams as Venus
Themes
- infidelity
- dwarf
- attempted murder
- clown
- beauty
- carnival
- romance
- revenge
- murder
- black and white
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Ratings
IMDb
7.8/10
54,394 votes
Rotten Tomatoes
95%
Metacritic
80/100
- Year
- 1932
- Runtime
- 64 min
- Genres
- Drama, Horror
- Rated
- Not Rated
- Awards
- 2 wins & 1 nomination total
via OMDb · IMDb
Key facts
- Directed by
- Tod Browning
- Screenplay by
- Willis Goldbeck Leon Gordon
- Based on
- " Spurs ", 1923 short story in Munsey's Magazine , by Tod Robbins
- Produced by
- Tod Browning Harry Rapf (uncredited) Irving Thalberg (uncredited)
- Starring
- Wallace Ford Leila Hyams Olga Baclanova Roscoe Ates
- Cinematography
- Merritt B. Gerstad
- Edited by
- Basil Wrangell
- Production company
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
- Distributed by
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
- Release date
- February 12, 1932 ( 1932-02-12 )
- Running time
- 64 minutes
- Country
- United States
- Languages
- English, German, French
- Budget
- ~ $310,000
- Box office
- $341,000
via Wikipedia infobox
Internet Archive
audioCephii Space: Friends and Freaks Pt.2
Listen at Internet Archive →via archive.org
~39 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Freaks (also re-released as The Monster Story, Forbidden Love, and Nature's Mistakes) is a 1932 American pre-Code drama horror film produced and directed by Tod Browning, starring Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, and Roscoe Ates.
Freaks, originally intended as a vehicle for Lon Chaney, is set amongst the backdrop of a travelling French circus and follows a conniving trapeze artist who joins a group of carnival sideshow performers with a plan to seduce and murder a dwarf in the troupe to gain his inheritance. However, her plot proves to have dangerous consequences. The film is based on elements from the short story "Spurs" by Tod Robbins, first published in Munsey's Magazine in February 1923, with the rights being purchased by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Cedric Gibbons, a childhood friend of Robbins and MGM art department chief, was responsible for the purchase.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Freaks” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.